Cancun is home to the U.N.'s climate change summit, where negotiators will focus on narrow goals. Corbis

November 29, 2010

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Negotiators from 192 countries kicked off this year's United Nations climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico, on Monday, hoping to revive climate talks after last year's disastrous conference in Copenhagen. Unlike the 2009 summit, which had aimed for a broad international treaty on fighting global warming, the Cancun meeting will focus on smaller steps, such as establishing a fund to help poor countries adopt environmentally-friendly technologies and formalizing targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Can the Cancun summit make a difference? (Watch an al Jazeera report about the summit)

Absolutely. This could be a turning point: Cancun could be the place where "a global deal is put more within our grasp," says Lucy Brinicombe at Britain's Guardian. After Copenhagen, critics said the U.N. was too big to get anything done. But if negotiators at Cancun can determine how to raise $100 billion a year for a "fair climate fund" to help poor nations fight global warming, they will prove the naysayers wrong."Cancun climate talks are too big to fail"

The important thing is doing better than Copenhagen: Expectations are low for Cancun, says Emma Woollacott at TG Daily, and that's probably a good thing. Negotiators there could accomplish more than in Copenhagen by focusing on "various smaller issues," such as establishing a fund to help "protect tropical forests." This "at least has a reasonable likelihood of being achieved," and even limited success will quiet voices "grumbling" that U.N. climate talks are useless."Leaders gather for Cancun climate summit"